


Tipping, softly, towards the void

by Zofiecfield



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Feelings, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 11:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27969863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield
Summary: During her rough years in London, Jamie works doing maintenance at Bly Academy.  There, she meets Dani, the new teacher from America, carrying burdens of her own.  Jamie begins to garden in a small plot on school grounds, and as the garden grows, the darkness surrounding the pair begins to shift.
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 98
Kudos: 226





	1. life, for lack of a better word

Jamie woke with a start, eyes snapping open. 

Unfamiliar room, unfamiliar light through the window, unfamiliar naked body sprawled beside her. 

Familiar weight of her eyelids, familiar ache in her joints, familiar gnaw in her gut.

Dropping her head back to the pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut again for one more moment, to block out the day. 

She hated these mornings but seemed to trip her way into them far too frequently as of late.

Jamie sat up at the edge of the bed slowly, yawning. A sharp wince and a silent curse as the bruise blooming across her lower ribs and the new busted lip made themselves known. 

A jarring combination of fuzzy memories returned to her as she blotted the fresh blood onto the back of her hand. 

Clothes scavenged from the floor, wreaking of smoke. Out the door with no look back.

On the front stoop, she paused to light a cigarette, realizing she had no idea where she was. Unusual and a bit unnerving. She had to have strayed quite far to achieve that effect. 

She looked at her watch. 

_Shit._

By the time she made it home to change clothes, she’d be late to work, again. Tempting the edge of Mrs. Grose’s patience, these days.

She started walking as fast as her sore limbs would carry her, heading west on a gut feeling and slowly emerging into familiar territory. 

The urge to go home and crash for a day, maybe two, was so fucking strong. To sleep until this thudding in her head settled to its usual roar. 

But she needed this job, needed its singular demand in the otherwise blur of time passing. 

And home was more of an abstract concept these days, anyway. Just a dingy room that made her itchy, made her glance over her shoulder too often. Just the room that happened to house her handful of belongings at the moment. 

By the time she had changed her shirt and splashed cold water on her face, she was officially late.

She slipped in through the back door of the bus and leaned against the upright, closing her eyes for a moment.

Tired. Fucking exhausted, as usual.

An acrobat, forever walking the line between far too much and not nearly enough. 

Far too much alcohol, far too much noise, far too much movement to wake in her own body instead of this ancient bag of skin and bones she was standing in now. Much, much too much to claw her way out, to think clearly without the constant drone in her skull.

Not nearly enough to drown out the past, to pack the jagged crevices left in its wake. Not nearly enough to match the biting loneliness, the restlessness and loss, the disappointment and constant failure. Not nearly enough.

Numb wasn’t ever the goal. She’d seen what happens when people choose numb. Stumbling back down the same dark paths, over and over again, too blind to see they’ve been there countless times before.

Better to remember the blows and feel the old bruises under the skin. 

No, she didn’t want numb. She just wanted to dull these sharp edges. She just wanted them to tear into her a bit less.

But lately, she’d been slipping. No more dreams. No more appetite. No more tears.

 _Not much Jamie left at all_ , she thought, the gnaw curling up tighter in her gut. 

Numbness, spreading through her like the fucking darkness creeping into her room at night.

 _Make it through another day._ Smiles and chipper and snark. _Make it to another night_. Crawl into bed and let the world blink out for a bit.

She really needed to start sleeping again.

This life, if you could call it that, was exhausting.

“Miss Taylor!” The sharp call jerked Jamie to a stop. She cursed herself silently for not slipping in the back entrance.

Mrs. Grose was walking down the corridor towards her, the sharp click of heels with every step. The headmistress of Bly Academy, unflappable and omnipresent, it seemed.

“Miss Taylor, you’re tardy. Again. You are paid for a full eight hours of maintenance duties, and I expect you to fulfill that agreement.”

“Morning, Mrs. Grose! Sorry about that. Bus was absolute murder this morning,” Jamie said, with her most charming smile on full display.

Mrs. Grose had gotten close enough to spot the split lip by that point. 

Jamie watched the concern settle across Mrs. Grose’s face and prepared herself for well-meaning emotional combat. _Is everything okay at home, Miss Taylor? Has someone hurt you? Come sit, let me call the nurse. Let’s talk._

But instead, “Jamie, we have a staff room opening up next month. One of the groundskeepers is retiring. Would you consider taking the room? For a bit?”

Seeing the answer already on Jamie’s lips, Mrs. Grose raised one eyebrow and added, “No buses to fuss with anymore, so perhaps you’d manage to be on time for once?” 

The smile on Mrs. Grose’s lips, the gentle joke of it with that faint hint of motherly, all tucked beneath the stern. It almost pulled a yes from Jamie. Almost.

But outstretched hands so rarely come without an ugly price. So rarely, so rarely. 

“Not necessary. I won’t be late again,” Jamie said, for the dozenth time.

Mrs. Grose considered her for a long moment, then reached forward to squeeze her shoulder once before walking away.

Jamie breathed out slowly, feeling a bit unsteady. She shook herself and scrubbed her face with one hand.

“Tea,” she muttered to herself, turning back in the direction of the kitchen. “Yeah, tea.”

Jamie arrived at the dining hall just as breakfast was ending. 

She battled her way upstream through the flow of children and staff, angling towards the kitchen door off to the side. 

Owen was standing just outside the door, talking to a young woman Jamie didn’t recognize. He spotted Jamie and tossed a wave in her direction. The woman followed his gaze, finding Jamie’s eyes. 

Jamie nearly tripped. Something in the woman’s face tugged her firmly off balance. 

Tired, like looking in a mirror. Fucking exhausted.

And something else too, something she couldn’t quite name at the time.

The woman smiled a little, holding Jamie’s eyes just a moment longer than a passing glance, then waved goodbye to Owen and hurried out of the hall.

Jamie watched her go until she had fully disappeared around the corner. 

When she turned back to Owen, she found him smirking at her, leaning against the door. She blushed a bit and covered it with an eye roll. “Tea. Now, please.”

He chuckled, beckoning her into the kitchen. She hopped up onto the counter, gratefully accepting the steaming cup.

She took a long sip, waiting for the gossip to descend. Owen ignored her until she prodded him with one foot. “Well? Don’t hold out on me.” 

“New teacher, Dani Clayton,” he said, busying himself with a cutting board and a stack of carrots. “Replacing our dear Miss Jessel. She’s American, and she came here despite having a fiancé back home. A story, if those rings under her eyes have anything to say about it. A tale for another day, surely. Just hope we don’t lose her too quickly. She seems like a keeper.”

He stole a glance at Jamie, smiling a little at the way she studiously avoided his gaze.

“Perhaps,” he continued, tilting his head towards her, his voice playfully light, “she’ll find something worth staying here for.”

“Not your cooking, that’s for sure,” Jamie shot at him, before he could nudge any further.

“Hush,” he said, bumping her knee with his hip. “Do you want some porridge? There’s a bit leftover.”

“No,” Jamie said, setting the cup down and hopping off the counter. “Mrs. Grose will have my head if I don’t get to it.” 

The rumble of her stomach disagreed loudly. She ignored it and headed out the door.

“Mrs. Grose adores you,” Owen shouted after her.

She whipped around and winked. “Jealous, eh?”

She left the hall to the sounds of his laughter and the thunk of the knife.

On her way to the supply room and her many tasks of the day, Jamie stole a glance into the 5th Year classroom. 

The new teacher, Dani, paced the rows of the room, talking animatedly with hands flying. 

Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.


	2. done

Weeks passed by, with little to show for it. 

A busted set of knuckles. A cracked rib. A deep tear down one shin from hopping a fence as the sirens blared.

Too many holes in her memory.

Too little sleep, too little to eat.

Too much noise in her head, too much noise through the shared walls. Too much noise to think.

Too much fear when the door rattled in the middle of the night.

Too much of the past, of each passing day, of the future looming.

Jamie felt the days getting longer, stretching thinner, losing a dimension until they fell flat. 

Her pockets were empty, too empty for the steep cost of the smile and the charm that let her slip through each day unnoticed. 

She found herself seeking the hidden spaces of the school, where she could collapse for a moment. Smile gone, body slack, staring into space for a moment to scrounge up enough to pass through the day.

Carved out by the darkness around her, in her, peering over her shoulder.

Insides scraped clean.

New scars marked out across old.

Years of this. She had lived through years of this. 

Years of hard scrabble and flimsy hope, fighting with blood under her fingernails.

Exhausted. 

And now, feet slipping from underneath her, purchase lost entirely. Too tired, too tired to make another fist, to cling to the last shreds of hope for something better than this.

Slipping, slipping, back into the only narrative she’d ever been told. Trapped in the cage of it, and realizing only now, the door clicking shut, that she’d been in the cage all this time. 

Freedom, somewhere to run to, was just a weak lie to carry the girl, not strong enough to carry the woman.

Another generation lost.

The girl becomes the father. 

Buried in the dirt already, sucking in dust.

And then there was Dani. Dani who was everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

Dani sitting in the dining hall at the end of a table, pushing food around her plate. Dani, meeting no one’s eyes. Dani, flat, with a matte finish.

Jamie’s own bruised heart, reflected back in Dani’s face.

Jamie, forcing her eyes to skim past. 

Just that evening, Owen and Jamie had been leaning against the kitchen door during dinner, cups of tea cradled in their hands. 

Jamie’s eyes kept drifting to Dani’s bent form, to the cup of tea rapidly growing cold in front of her, to the slope of her shoulders and the drop of her neck.

“Go sit with her,” Owen whispered. “She could use a friend.” 

Jamie ignored him, so he nudged her with his elbow. “And so could you, Jamie. You both look like ghosts these days, haunting or haunted. It’s worrying. Since neither of you will lean on me, despite my best efforts and my _exceptional_ snacks, maybe you could lean on each other.”

Jamie took care to keep her breath slow and even. Took another sip of tea. Dragged her eyes from Dani for the thousandth time.

There were things Owen didn’t know. Things that she would need to slice herself open to explain. 

She had seen Dani becoming progressively transparent as the weeks had gone on, eyes dark with too little sleep or too many nightmares. 

She had watched as Dani skirted around the halls, stumbled and knocked her shoulders against corners. Seen the way her eyes skittered past the telephone.

And the children had been brutal to her, Jamie knew. Little beasts can smell fear. 

But, little beasts can’t see the difference between afraid and weak. 

There’s strength in there, surely, but buried deep, suffocating under whatever weight she’s carrying.

Jamie had watched her straighten. Watched her stare them down. 

Watched her deflate after, all the fight gone. Reserves, a thing of the past.

Jamie had seen this all. Seen it plenty and done nothing.

There was nothing to be done. There was nothing in her to give, nothing in her to spare. 

No way to save someone who is drowning when you’re already sucking water into your own lungs. 

Better to stay away. Better not to risk dragging Dani under. Better not to risk being taken down along the fracture lines, shattered beyond repair.

And Dani had seen her, too. Witnessed her armor thinned, witnessed the skeleton underneath.

Jamie had yelled at a student a few days ago. Had nearly raised her hand in anger.

Her cheek had stung as the impulse shot through her, memories of humiliation and pain rearing up.

She had rushed away from the moment, fled to the cool brick wall behind the building. Dry heaved from her empty stomach and sobbed gulps of air.

And Dani had seen.

Dani, crouched down against the brick on the other side of the trash bins, tears streaming down her face, teeth sunk into her palm to stifle her screams of desolate panic.

Their eyes hadn’t met. 

They had grieved their own sorrows without consolation. 

They had turned and walked away alone. 

Grief recognizing grief.

Pain seeing pain.

Hollow echoing into hollow.

Jamie shook her head and handed the cup to Owen. Said her goodnights and left.

Walked the long way home to tire her limbs, to guard against their restlessness.

Locked the door and checked it twice. Stripped off every last stitch and collapsed into bed.

Stared up at the crack in the ceiling and prayed to a god she didn’t believe in anymore. 

Prayed for enough for one more day. 

_Tomorrow,_ she thought, _tomorrow I’ll find a way. Tomorrow will be different._


	3. Heavy work

Jamie woke with the sun. She scrubbed her face in cold water and pinned her hair back in the way that had, once upon a time, made her feel like something. 

The bus was on time, a rarity. She leaned against the window and let the city roll by.

Her head was buzzing, heart pounding, gut twisted into a knot, but an eerie calm blanketed everything. 

Her days were numbered, she knew. The last few grains of sand in the hourglass, ticking down the time before she ended up bleeding out on the floor of the pub, bound behind bars, or in the prison found at the bottom of a bottle. 

She could hear them as they fell. One grain. Then the next and the next. 

Eerie calm.

Heels dug in for this final stand, pockets empty.

She had begged, with nothing to barter, for one more day.

And the world listened. It bent, ever so slightly, to spare her the hours.

Jamie was on the ladder, cleaning the light fixtures, when Dani ran past her in a flurry of skirt and hands. 

She glanced down in time to see Dani collide with Mrs. Grose as she stepped from her office.

“Miss Clayton,” Mrs. Grose gasped, reaching out for Dani a moment too late to prevent her from stumbling backwards and nearly wiping out. 

Dani righted herself, hastily brushing her wild hair from her eyes. She huffed out a shallow laugh which didn’t at all mask her tumult.

“Um, Mrs. Grose, I was thinking the kids might benefit from more time outside. They seem… restless? Do we have a garden here? I mean, could they garden?”

“Garden?” Mrs. Grose raised one eyebrow, more concerned than quizzical.

“Yeah, like flowers, or vegetables? To get them out of my classroom, I mean, out of _the_ classroom and into the fresh air.”

Mrs. Grose studied her critically. “I’m a seasoned educator, Miss Clayton, and it is my job to support you in this job. If you’re having trouble in the classroom, trouble with the students, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

Dani straightened up and tugged her sweater towards straight, with very marginal success. “Oh, no, no trouble. I’m fine.” 

The words were coming out fractured, breathless, but she plunged on. “Just thought, you know, enhancing learning with different sensory experiences and practical applications like,” she paused for a moment, then burst out with, “photosynthesis!”

Mrs. Grose nodded slowly. “We have some room left in the budget for student enrichment. I’ll ask the groundskeeper to build a couple raised beds on the south lawn for your use.”

Dani smiled at her, aiming for pleased, it seemed, but definitely hitting _Relieved_ far too hard. “Great. Great. That’ll be great.”

Dani turned and began to walk away, but then spun back around, nearly tripping herself again.

“Thanks. And um, how soon do you think the raised beds will be ready?”

Mrs. Grose held her elbow in an effort to steady her, physically and otherwise. “I’ll talk to the groundskeeper today and ask him to prioritize the project, but he’s got a lot on his hands at the moment, since his partner retired. It may take a few weeks.”

Dani visibly deflated. Jamie watched as the sliver of hope slipped from her, as the façade became too heavy.

And Jamie found her feet moving.

Down one rung.

And the next.

And the next.

Step after step until she stood beside Dani, shoulders nearly brushing. 

“I could build the raised beds for the garden, Mrs. Grose,” Jamie heard herself say, over the din of static in her head, over the thud of her heart.

“Thank you, but I’ll have the groundskeeper do it, Miss Taylor.”

“I’d be happy to do it. Please. Busy work for idle hands, and whatnot. Keep me out of trouble.” She tossed in a wink at the end, jarring with the drop in her gut, just in case it did some good.

“Do you have much gardening experience, Miss Taylor?” Mrs. Grose asked, cocking her head.

Jamie had the vague sensation of Dani vibrating beside her, too high, too restless. 

The buzz of it settled in beside Jamie's own resonant frequency. 

Jamie's head cleared the slightest bit and her body returned to her.

She jammed her hands into her coverall pockets and leaned back against the doorframe. “Yeah, loads of gardening experience. Loads.”

Mrs. Grose considered her for a moment, and Jamie held her breath, keeping the careful mask intact as she did so. 

Jamie was well aware Mrs. Grose had not been fooled by the false resume she’d submitted when she applied to this job last year, and was well, well aware she was not fooled now. 

She saw the moment Mrs. Grose decided to play along, once more, for reasons Jamie could not fathom.

The beastly thing caught between her shoulder blades relented and allowed a breath in. 

Mrs. Grose nodded. “Thank you, Miss Taylor. You have the week. I’ll have the building materials for the raised beds sent over to the south lawn tomorrow. You can coordinate with Miss Clayton when they are ready for planting.” 

Mrs. Grose turned and walked back into her office, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving Jamie and Dani alone in the hallway. 

Dani’s eyes ticked from the door to Jamie’s. Her lips parted ever so slightly, words waiting to be said.

A beat passed, and the words seemed to fade on her tongue. Jamie had none of her own left with which to lure them out.

Dani nodded once, sucking in a shaking breath, then turned and hurried back down the hall.

Jamie sunk back against the wall and closed her eyes as the adrenaline abandoned her.

That evening, Jamie found two books resting on her folded coat. The first, a seed and bulb catalogue from a local vendor. The second, _A Beginner’s Guide to the English Garden._

 _Property of Jamie Taylor_ was printed inside the cover of each, in Mrs. Grose’s neat handwriting.

She traced one finger across the words, her mouth suddenly dry, before she tucked them under her arm and carried them home. Laid them on her small table, talismans of a tomorrow.

The week past, and the skeleton of the garden took shape under Jamie’s hands.

Knuckles healed as her palms blistered and split open. Callouses rose in their wake, stronger for the beating.

She heaved lumber and shoveled dirt. Blackened a fingernail as she learned her way around the hammer.

Worked on her aching knees as the sunburn danced along her collar.

Rose early and dragged her body home late each night, aching and emptied.

And then, she slept. 

Like the dead, as the saying goes. But the dead don’t sleep, do they? Their rest, if they are fortunate enough to find it, is of a different sort.

She was more alive in that deep slumber than she had been in a year. In two.

As she worked, as the work found its home in the tension of her arms and the bend of her back, the

world

grew

silent.

Just the heartbeat and the hammer. Just the dirt on her shovel as it fell back to earth.

She looked up on the final evening, from where she crouched, hands buried in the soil.

She looked up and saw Dani, watching from the steps.

Jamie raised one hand in quiet greeting. 

Something flickered across Dani’s brow. Some sort of tortured hope.

Jamie watched her lungs inflate. Watched her lift one hand to match.

A second. A beat in time. Then Dani was gone, the doors swinging shut behind her.

Only after, only as she mopped her face with a rag, did Jamie realize she had been crying all that time. 

Mud of dirt and tears, streaked down her cheeks in the sweet relief of the world’s silence.

She nearly laughed.


	4. deep in the dirt

The raised beds were complete, their soil raked smooth and their walls sturdy. 

They stood ready, waiting.

Tangible possibility, not yet met.

Jamie dragged herself home that evening and climbed into the shower to scrub her skin until the week’s worth of dirt relented.

As the muddy stream swirled down the drain and the water ran clear again, as her limbs came lose, and the fatigue descended over her, the darkness began to creep back in. 

Banished by the work those past few days, banished by the shear heft of dirt and lumber and sweat, the demons saw the new emptiness of her and licked their lips. 

And she was too tired to hold them at bay.

Her gut began to seize again. Her heart lost its steady rhythm.

She wrapped herself in a towel, tight enough to feel its edges bite, and made herself a cup of tea. She sipped it too quickly, to let the scald solidify her for one more moment, one more moment before the merciless night.

Only then, as she winced from the burn and the crushing weight of the world edged in towards her, only then did she remember the two books.

There they sat, on the table, patiently waiting for her _._ Offering path to _tomorrow_ , as they had promised upon first meeting.

Her heart leapt a little, reaching out to catch in the last whisps of relief before it fled her entirely. 

She retrieved both books and spread them on the bed, flopping onto her stomach like a child. 

The monsters writhing under her bed, snapping their teeth and salivating, fell forgotten as she turned the first page. 

The sun had travelled its lonely path and slipped back into the sky overhead before she looked up again. 

Dog-eared pages and pencil notes in margins, a scribbled list of seeds and bulbs and seedlings to request.

She sat up and stretched, joints popping pleasantly. The quiet had returned, settling into her once again.

She drank her cold cup of tea and ate a handful of crackers as she looked over the list, a smile slipping across her face. 

_Aster_

_Nasturtium_

_English Lavender_

_Flowering Sage_

_Sunflower_

And half a dozen others. 

Flowers that had caught her eye for their resilience, their bold colors, their subtleties. Flowers she had heard of, distantly. Flowers she had seen in the gardens of homes that were not hers.

_Basil_

_Rosemary_

_Thyme?_

_Tomatoes (cherry, vine – ask Owen)_

_Green Beans_

_Sugar Snap Peas_

_Spinach_

Vegetables and herbs for Owen in the kitchens, or to be picked with fingertips and eaten ungracefully in sunshine. She would go visit Owen on Monday, she thought, to run the list past him. He would, surely, have an opinion and a Thyme pun or two.

_Twine_

_Bamboo rods or narrow posts_

Supplies for cages and trellises, her fingers already itching to tie the knots and see the tendrils creeping, to build living, breathing spaces that loomed up from the earth in defiance of gravity.

And then, there, at the bottom of the list.

_Moonflower_

She had, as the night passed, flipped to that page again and again. _Moonflower._

Beauty tied tightly to the tick of time. Transient and no less precious for it.

Unbidden, Dani’s face sprang to mind. Again, for the hundredth time since the first day, since the first sight. 

Monday came and found Jamie caught up in her regular duties around the school, though her mind was firmly planted outside in the dirt. She sped through her To Do list, haphazard in her efficiency, and was done by lunch.

Seed catalogue tucked under one arm, Jamie made her way to the kitchens, where Owen stood at the stove stirring a large soup pot. 

He glanced over his shoulder and beamed when she walked in. “Hey, stranger. I’m _soup_ rised to see you! You weren’t around at all last week.”

Jamie leaned her belly against the counter beside him and opened the catalogue to the page marked. “Been busy building some garden beds on the south lawn. Thought you might want some vegetables planted.”

Owen smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes. Hannah told me about your project. For the lovely Miss Clayton, is it not? So kind of you.” 

His smile took on a smirking tinge at the end, and he glanced sideways to read Jamie, whose heart had stuttered a little at the tease. 

She tamped the stutter down, no room for the question of it in the fragility of a good day. 

She shot back at him, “Been talking to _Hannah_ , have you? How often does that happen, a friendly chat alone with Mrs. Grose?”

Owen shrugged, grinning widely. “Occasionally, Mrs. Grose joins me in the kitchen in the evenings. I need _soup_ ervision from time to time.”

Jamie rolled her eyes, but a smile crept over her. _Good for them_. _A pair deserving of the happiness they’d bring each other, if they took the risk._

Owen handed Jamie a bowl of soup, and pointed to a chair. “Sit. Eat. No arguments.” 

She made to refuse, as she always had. _I can feed myself, thanks,_ on her lips. But he turned his back to her, bent over the seed catalogue, and she found the soup smelled quite nice. Her stomach, keener than her head was stubborn today, won out.

While she ate, Owen flipped through the catalogue and amended her list, talking quietly and sometimes a bit animatedly to himself as he did. 

“So, what will our dear Dani be planting with her students? Will they have _thyme_ for gardening among their studies?” he asked once he had finished, chuckling at his own pun.

Jamie took her time, slowly slurping a spoonful of the soup before answering, forbidding a blush in her cheeks. “I haven’t asked yet. She’s my next stop.”

“Well, she’ll be lucky for the company,” Owen said, pushing no further. 

He filled a second bowl with soup and slid it across the table towards Jamie. “Bring her this for me, would you? She doesn’t show up to meals too often these days.” 

Jamie nodded, placing her empty bowl in the sink and shoving a roll into her mouth.

She tucked the catalogue and the list (now heavily modified in Owen’s script) under one arm and lifted Dani’s soup. She mumbled her goodbyes and thanks through the mouthful, heading for the door.

“It was good to see you, Jamie, and it was _soup_ er to feed you for once. Come back tomorrow, yeah?”

She waved back at him and he called after her, “Have a _soup_ erb day!”

Bowl of soup in hand, ignoring the riot in the pit of her stomach, Jamie walked to the 5th Year classroom. 

She had not, it occurred to her, as she arrived at the door, ever actually spoken to Dani. 

There was no justification for the nerves splaying themselves across her chest, nor for the warmth spreading up her neck, its tendrils finding her cheeks and ears.

And there was absolutely no reason for the smile already on her lips at the thought of a moment alone with Dani.

She found Dani in the empty classroom, standing in stocking feet on a chair, which was balanced precariously on top of a desk. 

A poster of equations was half tacked to the wall in front of Dani, but she seemed to have become lost before finishing the job. She stood quite still, one hand braced against the wall, her eyes fixed and unfocused. 

Jamie slipped into the room without a noise and set the bowl down carefully on a desk. Ceramic on wood, the faintest click.

Dani startled, taking a small step back, the entire tower shifting underneath her. 

Jamie lurched forward to steady her, one hand on the leg of the chair and the other wrapped around Dani’s calf.

Dani froze in place and Jamie heaved out a cuss. “ _Fuck_.”

This pulled a bubble of a laugh from Dani. Jamie’s eyes shot up to her, the novelty of that laugh zipping up her spine, from her tailbone to the base of her skull.

“What are you doing up there?” Jamie asked, letting go of Dani’s calf as an afterthought, more reluctant to do so than she had any reason to be.

“The chair was too short,” Dani said, by way of insufficient explanation. She tacked up the other end of the poster quickly.

“I could have helped, you know.” Jamie offered a hand and Dani climbed down.

Hand in hand still, a puzzled smile springing to Dani’s face and she looked right at Jamie. “You’re short too.”

Jamie grinned, half at Dani’s bemusement and half at the buzzing delight climbing up her arm at rapid pace, originating in Dani’s upturned palm.

“Yes, but I have a ladder,” she said, gesturing at the teetering pillar of classroom furniture. “And you have this… deathtrap.”

Dani smile deepened.

Jamie was quite aware of how close Dani now stood, her soft smile pushing open doors in her face, so typically bolted shut. 

A breath passed. Two. 

Jamie shifted, ever so slightly and Dani moved in kind. Just the faintest of leans, as one does when enjoying the company and wondering what could come next.

And then, quite, quite suddenly, the doors of Dani’s face began to shut. 

Jamie saw the moment Dani remembered herself. Palm slipped from palm and fell lifeless to her side. Familiar panic rose in her eyes before the mask fell into place.

The proximity, the open smile, the ease in her body a moment ago. Gone. One by one, sunk back beneath the surface.

Jamie’s heart broke watching it, her own calm ebbing away as Dani retreated, her own smile becoming tight and varnished. Genuine delight giving way to the polished set of smile and smooth and charm Jamie had worn to tatters over the years.

Jamie took a step back and turned from Dani, determined to salvage the little left of the moment. 

Dani sucked in a sharp breath, one hand drifting to her forehead in the brief privacy Jamie afforded her.

“The garden beds are done,” Jamie said, heart sinking as she forced her voice into its practiced box. Casual and pleasant, careful. She laid open the seed catalogue on a desk. “What were you thinking of planting with the students? Beans, maybe?”

Jamie turned then, to find Dani fully opaque.

They met eyes only for a moment, mask to mask, mirror to mirror.

“Beans would be great,” Dani said, clipping the edges of the conversation neatly. “Thank you.”

Jamie nodded towards the tray of soup. “And Owen sent that for you. He said you’re _soup_ posed to eat it all.”

Dani smiled at that, but it was the polite smile she wore for everyone else. 

Disappointment settled heavy in Jamie’s gut. She excused herself and left.

Jamie could not shake the memory of Dani’s smile, her real smile, in the moment before she slipped back behind her mask. 

It came to Jamie, that smile, again and again,

as she unpacked the seeds and bulbs and seedlings,

as she sunk to her knees at the garden beds,

as she buried her hands in the dirt.

She would like, she thought, to see that smile again, to have enough within her to feed the hungry space between them and draw it out.

In the first days of the garden, as she hammered and hauled, and in the next days, a she tied and trellised and planted, she let the work hollow her. 

She savored the emptiness the work left behind, so different from the emptiness she had known. 

Not emptied by force, by cruelty, by grief. 

Emptied by choice, emptied like the divot in the dirt that awaits the seed.

Her trowel, a blunt weapon against the darkness, carving out space for something new.

With each seed, she held potential between her fingertips. Kinetic energy against her skin. 

Struck with twinned wonder and doubt, she tucked each into its place in the darkness, with the promise of sunshine.

When the first sprout came, she cried at the sight of it, fell to her knees and named it in a whisper. 

As the days turned to weeks,

as the seedlings grew and the flowers came,

as the vines found twine and began to climb,

she found she was no longer empty, no longer waiting. 

There was some of her, now, in that hollow. Bits of her that had starved in the darkness, bits long thought lost. Bits that had been there all along, under the dirt of her, waiting to be watered, waiting for the light.

Somedays, she found herself gravitating towards the sun, tilting her face into the warmth, turning her palms up in worship. 

Somedays, the warmth seeped deeply and carried her through the night.

Somedays, the cool darkness found her as she slipped into sleep and stole the smooth depths of it from her. 

Somedays, the sun was not enough to quell the demons that still lurked (that would, she knew, lurk always). 

But, morning followed the night, every time, bringing with it sunshine, bringing with it rain.

And the plants welcomed it all the same.


	5. shoots and sprouts

Jamie had, admittedly, steered clear of Dani for the past two weeks. 

A litany of excuses scrounged up to avoid the carefully manufactured pleasantries on Dani’s face. 

Or rather, to avoid the moment the door to the polite box engulfing Dani clicked shut, obscuring the hope that flickered across Dani’s face for a split second every time she saw Jamie. 

Jamie itched, more and more as the days passed, to dig her fingers into the seams of that box, to pry the lid off and climb inside. 

To rescue Dani from its depths.

But, Jamie knew better. 

Her own box, still carried on her back like a turtle shell. The memory of the darkness within still fresh, still present, still casting a heavy shadow around her feet. 

Yes, Jamie knew better.

Dani would have to rescue herself, would have to claw her own way out with blunt and bloodied fingernails.

All Jamie could do was knock on the sides and listen for the echo. Slip in through the cracks and offer an extra hand for the fight.

“It’s time,” Jamie said, walking into Dani’s classroom uninvited, with a single knock on the door. 

“Time for what?” Dani asked, looking up from the stack of papers on her desk, face guarded within a second, but not quite fast enough.

“Beans. They need to go in the ground this week or we’ll be bumping up against the frost come fall.” 

Jamie said this with an air of authority, though in truth, this was information she had garnered only a week ago, chewing the end of a pencil on her bed as she flipped through her rapidly expanding array gardening books. 

Dani started to bite her lip, but forced herself to stop. 

“Great,” she said, the chipper in her voice only just barely covering the shuddering breath beneath it. “I’ll take the kids out this afternoon during their science period to plant them.”

“See you there.” Jamie nodded and walked out of the room before Dani could get anything else out. 

The polite and distanced _No, thank you, I don’t need any help_ had been right there on Dani’s lips, and Jamie wasn’t interested in hearing it. 

Jamie plowed through her work at breakneck speed. 

Midway through the morning, Mrs. Grose walked by and raised an eyebrow at the still dingy corners of the hallway. 

Jamie, in the process of running the mop in broad swaths down the center, paused. She opened her mouth to excuse or explain, but the truth spilled out instead.

“I’ll do it tomorrow, Mrs. Grose. Honest. It’s just, today, the garden…” 

She gestured over her shoulder, in the vague direction of elsewhere, a plea she hadn’t intended to admit to.

Mrs. Grose considered her for a long moment then nodded once. “Tomorrow is fine, Miss Taylor. Finish up with this quick, then spend the rest of the day on the garden. And eat some lunch. Owen’s made a lovely shepherd’s pie.” 

Jamie grinned, her limbs melting in relief. “Thanks. Will do.”

Mrs. Grose began to walk away, but then turned back. “Your hard work has been noted, Miss Taylor. Stop by my office at the end of the day, please.”

Jamie scarfed down the heaping portion of shepherd’s pie Owen handed her, distantly aware it was delicious, but too preoccupied to take true note. 

He watched her, head quirked gently to the side. “In a rush, are we?”

“Garden,” she mumbled through a mouthful.

“Is it running away on the two o’clock bus?”

She looked up at him, confused. “What?”

“Well, it’s just that you’re _shoveling_ that in at an alarming rate. I’m worried you’re going to arti _choke_.” Owen grinned, clearly quite proud of himself.

Jamie rolled her eyes.

“The fifth years are coming out to plant beans today,” she said into her bowl, careful not to meet his gaze as she did.

He chuckled, leaning back against the counter. “That explains the hurry. An afternoon with Miss Clayton is kind of a big _dill_.”

Jamie looked up at him then, her face painted in bemused pity. “Poor Hannah. Does she know what she’s getting into with you? You’re a bloody nightmare.”

“She happens to think I’m a delight,” Owen sang, tipping his nose into the air at her. 

Jamie smiled and handed him her empty bowl. “Thanks for lunch.”

She headed for the door. The garden was waiting and there was no more patience in her for delay. 

“I expect you to spill all the _dirt_ later!” he shouted after her. “ _Romaine_ calm! Have f- _onion_!”

Jamie busied herself weeding the flower beds and pruning back her basil, which was flourishing, thank you very much. 

On any other day, time ceased to exist in the garden. She would kneel down one hour and look back up three or four or six hours later, the sky falling dark around her. 

But today, she felt every agonizing second as it t i c k e d b y, until at long last, Dani and the fifth years were trooping across the grass towards her.

Dani looked tired, as she always did, worsened by mid-day. She offered a wave to Jamie, but the smile wasn’t right.

Jamie beckoned the class over to the raised bed that had gone empty, awaiting their arrival.

“Class, this is Miss Taylor,” Dani said. “She’ll be showing us how to plant beans today. We’ll be coming out at least once a week to monitor their progress, paired with our discussion on photosynthesis and plant cellular structure.”

There was some grousing among a subset of the class, lagging towards the back, at this announcement. A snide rumble of _the housekeeper, isn’t she?_ and _father will be appalled when he hear._

Dani spun to them sharply. “If you’d like to go back inside and receive no credit for this particular unit of study, feel free. I’m sure Mrs. Grose would welcome you to wait in her office for the next hour.”

This sufficiently stifled the chat to frowns and a bit of sulking.

Jamie tried to swallow back her grin, entirely impressed. Little snots could do their best, but they were no match for Dani Clayton, even at her most fragile.

Soon, Jamie had the class squatting around the bed with the stack of paper cups she’d borrowed from Owen as makeshift shovels. She prowled around them, critiquing depth of hole here, and seed placement there, taking giddy joy in making the exercise far more serious and academic than needed.

She spouted her newfound plant knowledge like she had been studying the subject for a lifetime. 

Mid-way through demonstrating how to pat down soil over the bean, Jamie heard a sniggering behind her. She turned to see a handful of kids surrounding a boy on his knees, something trapped in his cupped palms. 

“Oi,” she shouted, sharp enough to draw his attention. The boy shoved his hands into his pockets, which wriggled just a bit. 

“Since you’re done early,” she said, straightening to her full (if not particularly notable) height, “you can help me with the pruning.” 

The boy groaned and kicked the side of the garden bed. 

The flare of anger nipped at her; it would have been so satisfying to give into it, for a moment, to bite back. But she was having far too much fun, and Dani was so damn close. 

Just a garden bed away. 

So instead, Jamie waited, hands in her pockets. 

A child like this, all edges that the world had sharpened for him, did not intimidate Jamie. She had been that child too.

The boy slouched over and dropped down beside Jamie at the adjacent raised bed. She lowered her voice to place it just between the two of them, and began to show him how to pinch off the double leaves of basil, just above the join. 

The boy, for all of his attitude, could not deny the rhythm of it, pinch and pluck and start again, and he was soon as he should have been. Ten years old, in the sunshine, his hands buried in dirt and his thoughts a pale blue. 

“Miles,” he told her when she asked his name. 

“Well done, Miles,” she said. She sat back and left him to his work, satisfied with the both of them.

Jamie gravitated next to a pair committing a well-meaning drowning of their beans with the watering can. 

Halfway through a particularly passionate lecture on soil moisture, she felt the prickle of eyes on her.

She glanced up, over the heads of the students beside her.

And there was Dani, watching her from across the garden bed, one hand raised lightly to her lips, face warm and openly fond. 

Jamie held Dani’s eyes as she finished her spiel, the smile dancing along the corners of her mouth significantly undercutting the severity of her lecture. 

Jamie held Dani’s eyes until Dani finally looked away.

And when Dani did finally look away, it was with a light blush on her cheeks, smile lingering on her lips.

Getting summoned to the headmaster’s office was not a new experience for Jamie, who had, in her schooling days, spent a good deal of time there for a host of reasons, few of which had been her fault to begin with. 

She had no fondness for the office or the summons.

“Oh, good, Miss Taylor, come in, come sit.” Mrs. Grose beckoned Jamie inside the office with a broad smile.

Jamie sat, somewhat awkwardly, on the offered chair. 

She did her best to sit in a way befitting the chair and the office and the impeccable company, but after a couple shuffles of her limbs, gave up. She managed to cross one knee over the other, but it ended up sort of jaunty, with one hip thrown wide and an elbow on the edge of the armrest.

Well, she had tried, anyway.

“Miss Taylor, forgive me, I only have a few moments, so I’ll be brief. You’ve gone above and beyond these past few weeks. The garden beds are excellent, and you’ve upkept your full complement of maintenance duties in addition. You’ve come in early and stayed well past the end of your shift.”

Jamie squirmed just a bit in her seat. As uncomfortable as the many hours she’d spent in rooms like this as a child had been, hurt and increasingly angry, this was somehow more uncomfortable. 

Kind words made her itchy. They sat foreign on her skin and her gut reaction was to brush them off and check for barbs.

But she knew perfectly well she would find no barbs here, no undercut. 

Quite new, this experience. She didn’t know what to do with her face.

Politely ignoring Jamie’s wriggling, Mrs. Grose plowed ahead.

“We have a groundskeeper position open at the moment, as you may know. The list of duties is more extensive, but the position does entail a proportional increase in pay. I think you would be an excellent fit. The position is yours, if you’ll accept.”

Jamie swallowed hard as the words settled into her head. 

She was entirely unaccustomed to a path forward, well lit and free of potholes and traps. I seemed far too good to be true, far too good to be hers.

“And the garden beds? Could I manage them still?”

Mrs. Grose smiled softly. “Ah yes, the garden beds. I forgot to mention. The Board has just allotted funds for the creation of a small flower garden on campus. That garden, its planning, implementation, and upkeep, would be your primary duty in this new role. As well as the upkeep of the new south lawn garden beds, of course.”

Jamie could not, truly, believe her luck. At a complete utter loss for words, she just nodded a few times too many. 

A grin snuck across her face before she could even begin to register the relief and giddy glee erupting in her gut.

“Is that a yes, Miss Taylor?” Mrs. Grose asked, knowing full well the answer.

“Yeah, that’d be good.” An understatement, by a mile.

“Excellent. I’ll draw up the paperwork and we’ll sort out the details next week.” 

Mrs. Grose began shuffling papers on her desk, tidying the stacks. She glanced at the clock and then at Jamie, who was still sitting, now quite sprawled, in the chair, delightfully dumbfounded.

Mrs. Grose tipped her head slightly to catch Jamie’s eyes. “If you’ll forgive me, Miss Taylor, I’m due on a call any moment. You can see yourself out.” 

Jamie kicked into gear with a start, jumping from the chair and damn near skipping from the office.

“Oh, Miss Taylor?” Mrs. Grose called after her.

Jamie ducked her head back into the office.

“There have been reports of mice in Miss Clayton’s classroom. Would you please check the room for nests or spots in need of patching?”

“I think those mice are coming from little jacket pockets, not from holes in the wall,” Jamie said.

Mrs. Grose nodded, grim. “Yes, that was my suspicion as well. I’ll check in with Miss Clayton. Please do a sweep of the room anyway, just to be thorough.”

Dani’s classroom was empty, which was, Jamie noted, rather disappointing.

“Knock, knock,” she said under her breath as she wandered in. 

There was a scraping noise in the closet, a shuffle and a small clunk. 

Jamie grimaced. She hated mice. Too much experience with them as uninvited house guests. Too much experience to know there is no nice way to rid a space of them.

Ugly death, no matter what.

Jamie took a deep breath and pulled open the closet door with a quick tug.

“Fuck,” she hissed, stumbling backwards and tripping over a chair as Dani, who had been sitting on the floor of the closet in the dark, gasped in surprise.

Jamie only just barely managed to stay on her feet. She braced her hands on her knees as her heart restarted with a gruesome thud. 

Then the absurdity hit her, and the laughter came, hard and enough to bring tears. 

She wiped her eyes repeatedly, catching watery glimpses of Dani leaned against the wall of the closet, one hand clutching her stomach as she sucked in breaths, body shaking with laughter.

When Jamie could manage words again, at least somewhat around the residual chuckles, she said, “In the closet, are you? Rough spot to be in. Been there myself, once upon a time.”

Dani’s laughter died instantly, with a sickening thud. Her eyes shot wide and her face paled to an eerie shade. 

Jamie regretted the joke immediately, tucking away Dani’s response for later. 

“Sorry, bad joke,” she muttered, coughing a little. She moved on quickly in a desperate bid to start again.

“Heard you’ve been having mice problems? Are you hiding from them in there?”

Dani stared at her, face still frozen in what looked, quite plainly, like fear, failing utterly to find her mask or attach it securely.

Jamie averted her eyes, busying herself with a firm visual study her feet. 

After a long moment, too long, far too long, she felt Dani shift, ever so slightly.

“Hiding from the kids, actually,” Dani said, her voice tight, but not as tight as Jamie had anticipated. “And from the other teachers. Just, not many places to be alone for a moment here.”

Jamie ran a hand through her hair, hitting a tangle of curls and regretting the motion. She nodded in the vicinity of Dani, skipping past her eyes, and reached for the door. “I’ll leave you to it then. Sorry, again, for the joke.”

Dani caught the door with a palm just before it clicked shut. “Do you want to sit? For a moment? I have chips.” 

She brandished a bag.

It was such a bold invitation, halting Jamie in her tracks. 

Ordinary, on the surface. 

But the flash in Dani’s eyes as she said it, the daring there, the wild leap of a hand outstretched.

Extraordinary.

“Alright,” Jamie said, quietly. 

Dani scooted over a bit, and Jamie settled beside her on the floor. Dani reached across to tug the door shut, but Jamie stopped her.

“Might not want to shut the door all the way, if you plan to hide here often,” Jamie said, using a book to block the door open a crack. “My older brother, Denny, locked me in the broom closet once, and, well, a cautionary tale.”

She glanced over at Dani who was watching her, eyebrows inching towards each other, lips in a thin line.

Jamie stuffed a handful of chips into her mouth and leaned back against the wall. “ _Crisps_ , by the way,” she said handing the bag back to Dani. “Not chips.”

“Right, yeah.” Dani dug a chip out of the bag but seemed to forget about it before it reached her mouth.

Jamie watched her out of the corner of her eye. “Kids’ve been messing with you, have they?”

Dani’s hand fluttered, brushing this away. 

“Oh, no, they’re fine. Just kids being kids.” Her voice floated a bit too light, a bit too easy. She kept her eyes trained on the opposite wall, careful to avoid Jamie’s eyes.

Jamie bumped her shoulder. “I don’t like being lied to. We could sort them out together, if you’d like. Pull them up like weeds.”

Dani smiled a little, but it fell far short of her eyes. 

For a long moment, she held still, gaze fixed on the opposite wall in the dim light. 

And then, a quick, audible breath. 

“The kids aren’t the problem.”

Jamie waited, her own breath caught in her chest. She let the silence sit and sit and sit, just in case, just in case Dani –

“I moved half a world away and they still… I’m still… it just wasn’t right, hasn’t been… I’m not… I think I’m -”

The words tipped out of Dani, jumbled and stuttered and incomplete, but closer to the truth than she’d dared in the months since she’d boarded that plane. Closer to the truth than she’d dared in twenty years.

Jamie shifted, turning towards her, this fraction of truth resting there, a tender thing to be swaddled against the chest.

There were more words to be said, poised on Dani’s lips, but the height was too great, the dismount too risky. 

Dani smiled and chuckled a little, shallow and thin. “Anyway, I’d better get ready. The kids will be back in ten minutes and there’s still a whole afternoon to survive-”

She paused, caught on the end of the sentence, the phrasing unintended. 

Jamie watched as Dani chose not to amend it, watched as she chose to let the rawness of the past few minutes sit naked between them. 

Jamie watched in humble awe.

In this delicate moment, balanced precariously, Jamie rose to her feet. She offered a hand, pulling Dani up. 

“Okay, then,” Jamie said, taking a step back from Dani. She shoved both hands in her pockets to stop her fingertips from getting any ideas. “Maybe we could do this again, sometime.”

Dani smiled, lifting an eyebrow, the wryness of it only just counteracting the blush on her cheeks. “Do what again? Eat snacks on the floor of the closet?”

“Yeah, exactly.” Jamie grinned, backing herself towards the door. “I bet Owen would deliver lunch to any dark corner of our choosing. The closet. Maybe under a desk. Or behind the trash bins, might be a nice spot for a bite to eat and a chat.”

She paused in the doorway, just for a second, just to savor the look on Dani’s face, the grateful smile for the easy end. 

Jamie tapped her open palm against the doorframe once then left without saying goodbye. 

Because no part of this was goodbye.


	6. Bookends

Jamie walked down the hall towards Dani’s classroom, as she had done at least once per day for the past week. She forced herself not to hurry. 

Casual, if only in gait speed.

She would, she thought, just pop her head in, as she’d taken to doing. 

A quick chat, nothing deep, nothing to tug Dani off balance, precarious as she already was.

Just enough, just Dani, for a moment. 

As she neared the corner, she heard Dani’s voice and a broad smile split across Jamie’s face. 

She could have bitten it back, that smile. She could have sauntered a bit more instead of this heart-first forward tilt. But to do so would have required examining the smile, the tilt and thud, and she was (quite stubbornly) avoiding doing just that.

Best to not look too closely.

Broad smile, blooming. Turning the corner, Dani’s name already on her lips. And then –

Jamie stopped, frozen in her tracks. 

“No, Eddie. I’m not coming home right now,” Dani was saying. 

Dani stood, hunched, shoulders tight and spine bending under the weight of the clipped tone pounding from the phone.

Exhausted, Jamie knew, from the first word she had heard Dani speak. Exhausted and sad and exhausted some more. 

She knew that stance, the way each word had to be pushed out, the path constricted, too tight, too tight.

Looking at Dani, standing there, was like looking at the memory of a childhood nightmare. Dulled but still pulsing, shadows shifting under the bed.

“No, not over the summer either. There are summer programs offered and I-”

He had cut her off. Who, in their right mind, would cut Dani Clayton off? Dani, who should be savored, every single word of her. 

“Eddie, your family vacation will be fine without me,” Dani said, not managing to cover the tired sigh.

She leaned her head against the wall. Jamie watched her take forced breaths, slow and even.

“I understand your mom is disappointed about the wedding, Eddie. But this isn’t really about your mo-”

Again. He cut her off, again. _Jesus._

“We talked about this before I left. I need some time to-”

There was a burst of chatter from the phone. Dani ran her hand through her hair, a little too rough. 

Jamie’s body hummed with anger. She clenched a fist at her side, itching to put it through a wall, itching more to sooth Dani’s scalp with her fingertips.

Dani wilted, entirely. “Eddie, we weren’t happy.”

She waited out another burst, then amended, “well, I wasn’t hap-”

The words fired next, whatever they were, were received like a gunshot. Dani slid down the wall into a heap on the floor. She curled in around herself, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Of course not! How could you ask that?”

More shots, fired. 

Dani’s face paled sharply. She paused before answering, just a moment too long.

“That’s not a polite term for people like that, Eddie. And no, of course I’m not – I mean – of course I’m not-”

Jamie bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, her mind flashing back to the closet, to every look of panic, every look of pain, every smile that didn’t stick.

Whatever was said next did not carry at all, but it pulled the breath from Dani, sudden and brutal.

“I hope you don’t mean that… Eddie…”

Dani laid her head on her knees, cradling the phone against her shoulder. 

“Yeah, I love you too,” she sighed, exhaustion painted across her body.

A pause.

“No, Eddie. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just-”

The audible clunk of a phone being slammed down. The call, ended.

Dani froze. Slowly she pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it. Her face, blunt surprise, slapped hard with an open palm to leave no tangible marks. 

The edge of panic and grief coursing underneath.

Dani softly set the phone down on the receiver.

Jamie had to lean back against the wall herself, forcibly unclench her jaw, forcibly unclench her fists, suck a breath into her lungs. 

The phone rang again not a moment later. Dani answered, voice numb and flattened.

“Hello, Bly Acadm- Mom?”

Rapid chatter through the phone line. Too heightened, too much.

“Eddie called you? Just now?” Dani sat up straight, her voice pure disbelief.

“No, Mom, I’ve already told you-”

More talk. Another person who did not care what Dani had to say, who did not care to listen, who did not care to see.

“Mom-”

And then the click on the end of the line.

“Love you too,” Dani said quietly to the empty air as she set the phone back down.

Jamie couldn’t bear another moment. 

“Rough day?” she asked, rounding the corner. 

Dani looked up fast, sucking in a shaky inhale when she saw Jamie approaching.

“Hey,” she breathed, a watery smile just barely surfacing.

Jamie sat down beside her on the floor. She reached over and rested a hand on Dani’s knee.

Dani’s eyes dipped quickly to the hand, before returning to meet Jamie’s gaze.

Jamie’s mind, writhing just a moment ago in red anger, stilled and the words found her.

“Running away from home isn’t easy,” she said. “Home, the wrong sort of home, anyway, has a habit of bolting you down. Rusty nails, straight through the feet. You have to tear yourself to pieces to make it out. Shouldn’t be that way, I’ll grant you, but it is.”

Dani was crying openly now, tears streaming down her face. But she didn’t look away, so neither did Jamie.

“I’ve done a bit of running myself,” Jamie continued. “Quite a bit of running, to be honest. I know how it feels, to be trapped. To run and still be trapped by the same _fucking_ cage.”

“Yeah?” Dani asked, her brow a mess of hope and sorrow. “Any advice?”

Jamie smiled then, a sad, tired smile. She shook her head. “Not much of a role model, me. Bit of a mess.”

Before she could stop herself, Jamie reached over and brushed the tears from Dani’s cheek, her palm cradling Dani’s jaw for a heartbeat. 

Dani swallowed hard, leaning ever so slightly into the touch.

Jamie forced herself not to continue, forced herself not to leap over the line she was crossing. 

She did not let her thumb trace Dani’s lower lip. She did not lean in to whisper against Dani’s skin, to show Dani how she deserved to be spoken to.

“I cry several times a day around here, so you’re in good company,” she said instead with a shallow chuckle, reclaiming her reluctant hand.

Jamie’s body was vibrating, desperate to intervene, desperate to run into Dani at full tilt and fill her. 

But it wasn’t the time, and Dani wasn’t hers to fill.

She was at a loss. 

So she stood. 

Brushed her hands off on her pants. 

Took a step back.

Dani watched her go with a face Jamie couldn’t help but read as _stay._

Two steps back, Jamie stopped. Her heart stilled again, to listen.

She squatted down, eye to eye with Dani.

“I do know one thing. If you feel like you need to run, that’s worth listening to. You aren’t a mouse in a cage, no matter how loudly they tell you that you are. If you feel like you need to run, then run. The door isn’t locked. They’ve just told you that it is, over and over until you believed them, until it became real. But it isn’t locked, Dani. There isn’t a door at all. There isn’t a cage. Just them, binding you with their plans, their expectations, their ugly words. Just them.”

Jamie stood again, jamming her hands into her pockets.

“If you need to run, Dani, run.”

She sucked in a hard breath, forcing her heart to beat again, forcing her lungs to do their damn job.

And she walked away, her heart breaking along old fracture lines.

Jamie slipped into her new position at Bly, her days spent on the grounds in sunshine from dawn to dusk. 

The new garden would not come to fruition until the following spring, but already, it was taking shape in Jamie’s hands. Small, yes, but an empire in her eyes.

It had, once, been a garden, a long time ago, before the stone began to crumble and the patch was left to fend for itself.

A ghost, now, but she saw into the heart of it and heard it beat.

Soil tilled, winding paths marked out in stone. A bench here, an iron gate there.

She dragged her ladder across the grounds and into the garden, climbing high to prune back trees and tame the shrubbery.

She would sow seeds for tall grasses this fall, well before the frost. Wildflowers too, and bulbs to bloom early in spring.

A month passed and she would not have noticed, would not have looked up from her work, had it not been for Dani.

Dani, who took her by surprise.

Dani, who smiled when she met Jamie’s eyes, Dani who blushed and did not hide it.

Dani, whose mask thinned with each passing day. Dani, who raised her voice in anger and laughter. Dani who dared to make a noise in a world that had only ever seen her silent.

Dani, who brought the class to the garden beds each week, who knelt among them with Jamie by her side as though she had always been there, a breath away.

Dani, who took to sitting on the stone wall with a cup of tea in the fog of the mornings, chatting lightly to Jamie as the day began.

Jamie did not know what to do with this Dani, who held her gaze as she spoke. 

Jamie did not know how to comprehend the blush and the smile and the bump of a shoulder or the brush of a hand.

Jamie, whose heart had failed, utterly, to keep its distance, for the first time since 1967.

Jamie, who was falling, who did not quite understand what had happened or how to stop.

A month passed in the blur of the garden, but in every moment with Dani, time stood still.

Jamie wandered into the kitchen one night, long after the dining room had been cleared and the lights turned off, in hopes of scrounging up a cup of tea and a stolen biscuit or two.

Instead, she found Owen and Hannah, heads bent close at the tiny kitchen table, a candle illuminating their faces, warm and content.

“Shit,” Jamie said, grinning widely at the sight. “Feel like I’ve just walked in on somebody’s parents. Good for you.”

She tossed a wink their way and turned to leave.

“Miss Taylor.”

Jamie, cursing her timing, spun back around. “Mrs. Grose?”

Hannah smiled at her, soft in the candle light. “Owen and I were just enjoying some tea. Would you care to join us?”

Jamie’s eyes ticked to Owen, who had leaned back in his chair. He shook his head at her, mouthing an unnecessary, “Nooooo.”

Hannah glanced at him, her smile shifting brighter as she met his eyes. 

“Hush,” she whispered to him, and Jamie loved them both so much in that moment. 

It hurt terribly, in a wonderful way.

“I was just coming in to steal a biscuit and a cup of tea. Another time.”

“Miss Clayton was here just a bit ago, looking for you,” Hannah said.

Owen grinned, crossing one knee over the other.

“Oh,” was all Jamie managed, her heart stumbling a bit over this information.

“I think,” Owen said, pushing two biscuits across the table towards Jamie, “it’s time you dish.”

Jamie stuffed one biscuit in her mouth and the other in her pocket. She shrugged. “Don’t know what you mean.”

Hannah looked down, studying her tea cup as Owen’s grin broadened cartoonishly.

“You. Dani. The looks, the smiles on the two of you these past few weeks. A world away from the start of spring. Come on.”

Jamie tried to parry but Owen didn’t bite. He just waited. 

Hannah looked up again, her soft smile edged now with a bit of mischief.

Jamie shook her head and forced her voice light. “She has a fiancé. You said so yourself, Owen.”

In truth, she and Dani had not spoken about said fiancé, not once, not directly. 

Eddie, the man on the phone, surely. Eddie, who should be buried under six feet of dirt for speaking to Dani as he did. 

He had lurked there in Jamie’s mind, a blurry mass around which she bent light towards Dani. A blurry mass Jamie did her best to forget, because it complicated her head quite a bit, if she let herself think about Dani’s smile for more than a moment. Dani’s blush. The brush of a shoulder. 

_Fuck._

“Not so,” Owen said, interrupting Jamie’s internal spiral, one eyebrow sneaking up towards his hair line. 

“What?” Jamie said, before she could stop herself, before she could remember how to play it cool.

“She came in here, about a month ago, right after she ended it with him. We had a cup of tea and she came out with it. Not the full story – there were bits she dodged around, but I’m betting you’ve figured out some of those already. But enough of the story to give the picture. Tired and wounded, but she seemed relieved.”

“A month ago?” Jamie slipped down into an empty chair at the table. “She didn’t say.”

A month. The mask, thinning. The smile. The blush. The brush of a shoulder.

“Must have had her reasons,” Hannah said quietly, leaning in towards Jamie. “She’s a smart woman, like yourself. Knows that healing, grieving, takes time and can’t be rushed along, no matter how much we might wish it could be.”

Jamie’s gut was in tatters, writhing something ugly. 

But her heart had picked up a hopeful skip, an insistent thud.

Hope and the wanting it bore, hope she’d squashed down for weeks now, for months, if honest. 

It was all a bit sickening. She felt dizzy.

Hannah laid a hand lightly across Jamie’s, grounding Jamie just enough to listen. “She said she was heading to the gardens next. Hoping you hadn’t gone home yet, she said.” 

Owen, with slightly less tact, nudged Jamie’s chair with his foot and whispered, “Go!”

Jamie went.

It felt like a bit of a dream, walking the grounds in the dimming light, summer darkness descending around her.

Her feet knew where to go. They would have known with no sight at all.

Dani lay on her back, between the raised garden beds. Beans, heavy and thick, climbing to her right. Purple bursts of aster and sage to her left. 

She lay with her hands resting on her belly, gaze among the stars.

She did not stir as Jamie approached.

Jamie laid down in the grass beside her.

Quiet, the pair of them, as the night fell.

When the world had gone dark enough to erase itself, Dani shifted, ever so slightly.

Reached over to press her palm to Jamie’s. 

Threaded their fingers together, one by one.

Jamie’s heart with its thud and sputter, stilled. It curled up in her chest, eyes drifting shut. Content.

The silence in its wake, the newness coming.

“Jamie,” Dani said to the sky, a prayer in the darkness. “It’s beautiful what you’ve done here.”

Jamie turned her head towards Dani. 

She watched the smile on Dani’s face. Faint at first then deep and deep and deeper.

Dani looked at her. Met her eyes and held them steady.

“It’s beautiful,” Dani said again.

_One Year Later_

Life has a way of bookending chapters, of circling back to the start.

Jamie woke slowly, her eyes drifting open. 

Small flat, above the pub. Hers now, for nearly a year, filled to the brim with plants of all sorts. 

Soft light through the windows, the quiet bustle of the town rising in the street below.

Blankets tossed to the floor in the start of the summer heat. Body loose and easy from joyful use.

An arm, warm across her waist, a pleasant anchor.

Jamie smiled and traced her fingers lightly across the skin, winding roving paths from elbow to fingertips. 

She slid the pad of her thumb across the knuckles.

Dani sighed a little in her sleep and curled tighter into Jamie’s side.

Someone once told Jamie that déjà vu is the moment when the path you’ve been walking intersects with the path that was meant for you. 

A single moment in time when you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

Every moment with Dani was like déjà vu, one path notched in beside its twin, right where it belonged.

Jamie turned in Dani’s arms, tucking herself into Dani’s body, belly to belly, chest to chest.

Dani stirred, rousing just enough to press her lips to Jamie’s neck and snuggle closer.

Jamie began drawing long, lazy eights up and down Dani’s back. 

_Tonight,_ she thought. 

Tonight, she would take Dani to the garden.

She would show Dani the moonflower, climbing the iron, dark greens and stark whites, bold in defiance of its own transience. 

They would sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, as the midnight flowers bloomed. 

She would hold out the two thin gold bands, resting cupped in her palm. 

A question, an offer of walking forwards together, hand in hand, through their days.

_Tonight._

Jamie smiled to herself and ducked her head to kiss Dani’s shoulder.

Dani smiled softly, eyes blinking open. “Morning,” she murmured.

_Tonight,_ Jamie thought, then thought nothing else for quite some time.

There were two gold bands waiting, tucked in the pocket of Jamie’s jacket.

But right now, there was Dani, slipping a thigh between hers and pressing sleepy kisses along her jaw. 

Dani, rocking into the easy rhythm reserved for mornings like this. 

Dani, fingertips tracing up the back of her leg and over the arch of her hip, beckoning her in.

Dani, humming little loves against her skin. 

Jamie fell into step beside Dani, hands finding their favorite places, tongue seeking the breathy moans that made her heart skip beats.

She had grown this from seed, minded the tender sprouts of it with patience and care. 

They had grown this together.

As Jamie wound her hands into Dani’s hair, as Dani sighed into her kiss, as her breath lost its steady rhythm,

they were exactly where they were meant to be.


End file.
